NONFICTION
1 Tasty by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $55)
Food without meat.
2 More Salad by Margo Flanagan & Rosa Power (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
Food without meat.
3 View from the Second Row by Samuel Whitelock (HarperCollins, $49.99)
Rugby memoir.
4 Wild Walks Aotearoa: A Guide to Tramping in New Zealand by Hannah-Rose Watt (Penguin Random House, $50)
Named in ReadingRoom as one of the best illustrated books of 2024. The Ockham longlist will be released next Thursday; this book deserves to be on it.
5 The Life of Dai by Dai Henwood & Jaquie Brown (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Cancer memoir.
6 Atua Wāhine by Hana Tapiata (HarperCollins, $36.99)
Wisdom.
7 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
Defending democracy.
8 All Out by Neil Wagner (Penguin Random House, $40)
A free copy of one of the best sports books of the year is up for grabs in the first ReadingRoom giveaway contest of 2025. Wagner’s memoir is sometimes very candid; he writes, “If I close my eyes, I can still experience it through the mind of the 26-year-old I was on my third tour with the Black Caps, when I felt hopelessly lost off the field and was not yet wanted on it.
“I was in the hallway of the team hotel, standing in the cool bite of air-con, the windows on one side looking over the swimming pool. On the other side, the hotel car park shimmered through the muggy heat of a Colombo day. It was some time in November 2012, in the days leading up to what would be Ross Taylor’s final test match as captain. A couple of months earlier, I had achieved my childhood dream of playing test cricket. But the elation of that moment was forgotten in the agony of this one, the lowest of my life. One of the windows was open and all that went through my mind was what it might feel like to lean forward and fall through it, to tumble into the blackness and be done with all of this. I felt useless. I felt worthless and insecure, trying so hard to be someone I wasn’t – and feeling like I was failing at that, too.”
To enter the draw, tell us who you who your favourite Black Cap of all time is, with a few lines saying why you rate them so highly, and send it to [email protected] with the subject line in screaming caps CRICKET, by Sunday at midnight, January 26.
9 This is the F#$%ing News by Patrick Gower (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
As told to Eugene Bingham.
10 Serviceman J by Jamie Pennell (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Killing.
FICTION
1 The Songbirds of Florence by Olivia Spooner (Hachette, $37.99)
The biggest hit of summer belonged to the most-loved genre in New Zealand fiction – historical romance – as the North Shore bookshop owner fashioned a lively story set in wartime. Gill South, from her review in the Listener: “Spooner shines a light on a little-known group of Kiwi women, the Tuis, who were sent first to Egypt and then on to Italy during World War II … As the story starts in Cairo, we’re quickly invested in the main characters. There’s Margot, a grief-stricken young widow from Masterton whose husband died in Crete. Addy, her roommate, is a beautiful live wire, delighted to have broken away from her conservative Auckland family. The two become friends and are soon joined by Margot’s brother Grahame and his good friend Tom, who are in the New Zealand Second Division. Margot also meets a married soldier, Henry, whom she can’t forget … Her characters are richly developed and real, her descriptions of the locations, from Cairo to Bari, Rome and Florence, well drawn. At the end, we see Addy and Margot 20 years later and learn how their wartime experience has affected their life back home.”
2 Tree of Nourishment (Kāwai 2) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)
3 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu(Makaro Press, $37)
The Ockham longlist will be released next Thursday; this book deserves to be on it.
4 The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward & Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $38)
The sequel is due this year.
5 Marry Me in Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $37.99)
6 Kāwai: For Such a Time as This (Kāwai 1) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)
7 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
Named in ReadingRoom as the best book of 2024. Wilkins’s expertly composed story of an elderly couple downsizing to a retirement village is a sad and gentle literary novel which feels like it was torn, tenderly, out of the author’s heart. The Ockham longlist will be released next Thursday; if this book is not on it, I will set something or someone on fire.
8 Auē by Becky Manawatu(Makaro Press, $35)
9 All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Hachette, $37.99)
The Ockham longlist will be released next Thursday; this book deserves to be on it.
10 New Stories by Owen Marshall (Penguin Random House, $38)
The Ockham longlist will be released next Thursday; this book deserves to be on it.
This post was originally published on here
